Rakshanda Khan, MA, DTATI, RP
CRPO Registration #: 009036
CATA Professional Membership #: 54102684
Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. Membership # 1249567
Hi!
I’m Rakshanda, a cisgender South Asian immigrant to Canada who is passionate about comics and mental health. I am an Art Therapist and Registered Psychotherapist with certifications in Trauma-Informed Expressive Arts and Humanistic Integrative Counselling. I believe that art, creativity, and play are incredibly potent, insightful and useful tools for coping with life stressors and healing from trauma. I have been advocating for arts based wellness for the past 15 years. I’m also very interested in graphic medicine, comics in therapy, digital and online creative processes, as well as traditional arts practices to guide healing.
As your therapist, I offer a safe, empathic, and supportive environment in stressful, challenging, or unfulfilled moments. Together, we’ll collaborate on new ways for you to thrive in your strength, resilience, creativity, and resourcefulness. My role would be to support you to access your capabilities by exploring coping methods and tools to offer relief and insight. I’ll continue to remain flexible to your needs as they change and evolve.
I practice from a client-centered, trauma-informed, strengths-based, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive framework that recognizes that we all embody creative potential that we can access for personal growth. I have experience facilitating individual and group art therapy and psychotherapy with children, youth and adults. As a South Asian immigrant, I have lived experience navigating intersectional aspects of identity as a person of color in Canada. A combination of lived experience, training in art therapy and humanistic integrative counseling fuel my approach to meeting individuals where they are at.
I draw from diverse arts-based practices as I have observed that when clients connect with their inner creative resources, it can become easier to recognize and untangle older, ineffective patterns of being and relating. Creative engagement can help us feel safe, regulated, and attuned with ourselves, and engaging with our imagination allows us to embody new, authentic, more desirable futures.
Your art doesn’t have to be technically strong to communicate. Symbols, metaphors, color, textures, shapes, all speak for you and with you.
Values and Approach
I enjoy working with folks of all genders and orientations, and from diverse backgrounds, with a particular focus on immigrant and racialized communities. I have over 5+ years experience working with children, youth and young adults.
My approach is built on collaboration, and a deep reverence for lived experience. I believe that you know yourself best and that you have all the resources you need to thrive. My role is to support you by affirming, strengthening, at times questioning and challenging, so you can uncover for yourself how to align your heart, body, and mind with what is true and authentic to you.
